Two Decade Man

I'm officially a two-decade man. You may be wondering, "what the F does that mean?" Well I'll tell you. For quite some time this girl in Teach For America has been after me. This in itself is a rare and isolated occurence. However, the strangest thing about this girl is that she is no girl at all. She is a fully grown woman. She has a child by the name of Domminick who turns 14 in September. How old is she? I'm not sure, but this may give a clue as to how old she really is. She told me that she was in the same hotel Tupac was staying in the night he was killed.  And she was in college then... Meanwhile, I was in Ms. Drake's kindergarten class and I had just mastered using the toilet unassisted. This screenshot is also another example that shows her age.

Notice the xoxoxo's. I thought texting killed that. 

Now let's be objective about this. She's pretty good-looking, in a "soccer mom" kind of way. I'm cool with it. Anyway, shes been wanting to go out with me for a while now. I finally said yes. We got Indian food, and it was fun. She was way interesting. She told me that she graduated in 1991. This is big news for me. This means that I now have a 20-year spread on dates. 

Bloggers, from here on out you can refer to me as Veinte, Dos Decades, or the Berlin Wall.

Until next time, may my spread increase. 

Rojo 1991-2011

P.S. She told me that she was 37 but I personally think she's shaving off a couple of years to impress me. 

Markhem

My first week of teaching has finished, and to be candid with you the stories that I have from my classroom have really been quite a letdown . I am teaching at Markhem Middle School in Watts. The school is surrounded by four of the largest projects in Los Angeles, one of them being the second largest this side of the Mississippi. When a friend of mine googled Markhem Middle School, the first article that showed up had this opening “even in the most challenging of economic times, many unemployed teachers would rather remain jobless than teach in one of the harshest environments.”

The lack of scholarly expectation for this school created a high expectation for stories to be told within my mind. Sadly this has not been the case yet.  The students in my mind are too well-behaved. They are too obedient, and they are too boring. My first week on the job has been relatively boring. I mean there was  John Williams III (da third) who wants to go to college, have a wife and kids, and own a house. When I further pushed and questioned John about his future profession he said "naw Mr. Evans I got that figured out… After college I’m gonna bag groceries at Wal-Mart." For the most part, the stories of these children have been rather dull and boring.

           
While there has been a relative lack of excitement in regard to the drama in my students' lives, there is no durth in the troubles that they face. There are about five kids in my seventh grade Pre-Algebra class who haven’t the slightest clue how to perform the times tables. One kid even used a freaking numberline. I have about three kids reading on grade level, the rest are behind a grade or two, and there are about three who have a first or second grade reading level.

The saddest part about all of this is that these students are in the magnet program of the school. They are the scholars of Markhem Elementary. I hope they can succeed and I hope that I can help them, but I will be dead honest- can one teacher really change the life of all thirty of his students? I’d like to believe so and I want to work towards that, but I’m not sure it can happen.

My greatest fear is failing to give up as much as I reasonably can for these children.  I always feel like I can do better and I always feel that I can do more to help. We will have to see how everything works out. I hope it will go well.